


Burn

by amazingLeggy



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Aziraphale and Crowley in Love (Good Omens), Crowley would do anything for Aziraphale (Good Omens), Future Revenge, Grief/Mourning, Historical, Hurt/Comfort, I'll add tags as I think of them, M/M, Other, World War II, book burning, but you get to decide if it's platonic or romantic, including mastermind the deaths of multiple world leaders, no beta we discorporate like man-shaped beings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 17:22:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29920281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amazingLeggy/pseuds/amazingLeggy
Summary: It's 1933. The books are burning, and with them, Aziraphale's heart.A certain demon joins him in his anguish to contemplate the ashes.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 28





	Burn

_Berlin, 1933_

Dawn had begun to push at the horizon, edging the sky to just a shade beyond inky blackness as silence hung thick in the dust-choked air. Embers flickered like dying stars and tumbled along the cobbled ground, spilling into cracks and vanishing in the bone-chilling spring breeze.

A lone figure stood on the shadowy edges of the square. Nobody seemed to notice him, so camouflaged was he in the darkness against the white buildings and blanched ground that he seemed to melt into existence itself. Not even the sleepless remnants of the night’s crowd, milling about in the square in these moments before dawn, noticed him in his stillness. Shoulders stiff, jaw clenched, gloved hands buried deep in the pockets of his pale camel-hair coat. Eyes fixed straight ahead on the remains of the night’s spectacle. Emanating something that made every human instinct raise its hackles and hiss at the darkness.

The figure made no move as Crowley approached. Large flecks of burnt paper crunched like leaves under the demon’s feet as he snaked his way around the square, avoiding like the plague the workers who had begun to shovel the cooling mound of ashes away. Ever so gently, he edged into the reaches of Aziraphale’s bruised aura. Perhaps he had hoped his company would provide some solace in the midst of the angel’s anguish. But when he saw his eyes, fixed straight ahead, he shuddered at the recognition of rage in their icy depths.

Just when he thought he should say something, the angel swallowed and took the first breath that Crowley suspected he had taken in a long time. He held his own breath in return.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

The silence practically rippled under Aziraphale’s restraint, as if the very air would burst at its seams if he dared raise his voice higher than that strained whisper.

“I was… checking out the area,” Crowley said, measuring his words carefully. “When I heard what had happened, I knew you’d be here.”

Aziraphale scoffed disdainfully. “I suppose this is all your doing. Come here to spite me, have you?” He glowered at the fragment of a page drifting across the square toward him, edges charred and still smouldering. His eyes craved vengeance.

Crowley gaped. “Angel, you know they do this to themselves. You know I’d never burn _books_.”

“But you _are_ a demon.” He didn’t have to raise his voice for the implication to wound Crowley.

“And you’re an angel,” he implored. “What difference does it make?”

“For a start, I wouldn’t have repeatedly rejected someone from art school just for a cheap laugh.”

“And how was I supposed to know he’d turn out like this?”

The tumbling page halted against Aziraphale’s shoe. Kneeling to pick it up, the angel cradled it with unfathomable tenderness in his large hands. He looked sick as he read it. Wearing his sunglasses even in the dimness, Crowley could barely make out the printed words. _“...re the books that show the world it’s own sha…”_ As they both read the charred words again and again, turning them over in their minds, Crowley felt Aziraphale begin to emanate a newer, deeper kind of grief.

Slowly, tentatively, Crowley placed a hand on his shoulder. When the angel didn’t shrug it off, he kept it there, bound by the certain gravity of the moment. On any other day, in any other moment, he would have certainly never done it - not this publicly. To Crowley, the action felt stiff and unpracticed, the product of millenia of emotional distance and strict boundaries, both self-imposed and from Below. But in this moment - in this most private of moments - it felt right.

He could still feel the angel’s corporeal form trembling under his palm, barely containing the ethereal wrath threatening to burst out. The waves of pure anguish rippling through his aura could only be compared to that produced in the deepest bowels of Hell. Suppressing a shiver, Crowley used his thumb to stroke gentle circles into the angel’s shoulder.

When Aziraphale finally spoke, the words hissed low through gritted teeth, barely above a whisper, like lava flowing through the cracks in the earth and meeting the cold rocks with deadly, steaming kisses.

“I’d kill him,” he seethed. “If I wasn’t an angel, I’d kill him.”

When Aziraphale looked at Crowley for the first time, his eyes were rimmed with red and grief had taken a deep hold in the depths. Something in his soul had cracked, bleeding raw and wounded pain into the atmosphere, and Crowley hated the way his heart twisted at the sight. So he drew him to his chest and coiled his arms around him in a way he hoped was comforting. It must have been, because Aziraphale slid his arms under Crowley’s in return and buried his face in his scarf. He was still shaking. But _God_ , he was warm.

Crowley looked back toward the square. The ashes were nearly gone, the remaining embers dimming as the stars winked out, overtaken by the encroaching greyness of dawn. Centuries of knowledge, gone in a single night, leaving a gaping hole in the deepest heart of literature. Although Aziraphale was the one who worshipped books, Crowley couldn’t help but feel his own infinite well of inherent rage beginning to simmer quietly.

 _If I wasn’t an angel, I’d kill him_.

He’d done it before. A wave of reminiscent, sickening, predatory satisfaction settled stagnant in Crowley’s stomach at the memory of a warm day in Rome, when blood had pooled on the steps of the portico and laurel leaves were trampled under foot. _Another burner of books_.

He’d toppled empires for his angel, not that Aziraphale knew. For his angel’s sake, he’d do it again.

The demon rested his cheek against Aziraphale’s head and held him tighter. “I’m sure that can be arranged.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!! This fic has been in the works since the miniseries first finished airing - it's taken me a long time to build up the courage to publish it. This is my first EVER published fic, so I hope you enjoyed the pain of reading it as much as I enjoyed the pain of writing it :D


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